Leading down south

Negotiating the ‘A-­factor’

Featured in

  • Published 20220503
  • ISBN: 978-1-922212-74-0
  • Extent: 264pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

IT DAWNED ON me at high altitude above the polar icecap. My ears popped in the ageing plane, tubes of frosty oxygen up my nose, as I hung suspended in a bowl of blue over an endless expanse of Antarctic white. The logistical challenges ahead were enormous: we were embarking on one of the most ambitious inspection programs of Antarctica undertaken by Australia in the past sixty years.

For more than a month in early 2020, our team of four was tasked with criss-crossing over 10,000 kilometres of East Antarctica and the Ross Sea region in a DC-­3 airframe almost seventy years old that had been modernised into a Basler BT-­67 turboprop. Our mission was to visit and officially inspect six stations operated by the Republic of Korea, Germany, China, Russia and Belarus – and to ‘pop in’ to another six stations operated by other nations.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

About the author

Kim Ellis

Kim Ellis is Director of the Australian Antarctic Division.

More from this edition

Hope sends a message

FictionI am here to get the feel of the place; to understand why they are here, at the edge of the world, keeping hope alive. I need that hope and I think I am not alone in that sentiment. That is why I was sent, why I agreed to come, why this piece is being published – unless it has been suppressed. I am displaced as much as the people here; my family have not been to our homelands for generations.

Snowman

Poetry the hardest part about going to antarctica is coming back  after two years to a six-year-old daughter who screams  when you open the door to your...

Convergence

FictionThe holiday brochures talk about ‘the sound of silence’ in Antarctica. That it is an experience, elliptical and expansive. This has become a long-running joke at the base. Everyone knows that life here relies on making noise.

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.